"It is hard to imagine any parent of a psychopath who has not asked the question, almost certainly with a sense of desperation, `What have I done wrong as a parent to bring this about in my child?'

"The answer is, possibly nothing. To summarize our sparse data, we do not know why people become psychopaths, but current evidence leads us away from the commonly held idea that the behavior of parents bears sole or even primary responsibility for the disorder."

Robert Hare, Ph.D., inWithout Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, 1993

New research (See related article, Crime Times, Vol. 3, No. 3, Page 1) indicates that childhood hyperactivity, even in the absence of childhood conduct disorder (CD), is a risk factor for behavioral pathology in adults. But researcher Donald Lynam believes that children with both hyperactivity and conduct problems have a far greater risk of becoming serious criminals, and that these children in fact may have "a subtype of CD best described as fledgling psychopathy." It is this group of children, Lynam speculates, w w w who become the hard core five or six percent of offenders who commit more than half of all crimes.

Lynam cites extensive evidence linking the combination of childhood hyperactivity and conduct problems to adult psychopathology. Among the research findings:

*Children with both hyperactivity and conduct problems have higher rates of antisocial behavior in adulthood than children with either problem alone.

*Children with both hyperactivity and conduct problems exhibit antisocial behavior at an earlier age, and exhibit more frequent and severe behavior problems, than children with either problem alone. When conduct problems occur with other disorders such h h h as s anxiety, however, there is no similarly elevated level of deviancy.

*Children with hyperactivity and conduct problems show deficits on laboratory, psychophysiological, and performance tests that are suggestive of deficits seen in adult psychopaths.

Lynam hypothesizes that children with both hyperactivity and conduct problems have a cognitive defect he calls the "psychopathic deficit." "This deficit," he says, "is a failure to inhibit... goal-directed behavior, in the face of changing environmental contingencies." He calls this "deficient Psychopath [for psychopathic] constraint," and notes that it is also seen in animals whose levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin are depleted. (In humans and animals both, low serotonin levels are linked to impulsivity and aggression.)

America's search for answers to why its disgruntled children are killing their classmates has led to a desperate question: Are some people natural-born killers?

There is a growing belief in the scientific community that some children are predestined to violent behavior due to genetic or biological abnormalities.

Yet most believe that biology has to be accompanied by other factors to cause violent behavior, and shootings like those that have occurred in the nation's school hallways only happen after all of the factors align in just the right way.

''I think it is unfair to pit nature versus nurture -- I think it is nature and nurture,'' said Charles Ewing, a professor of law and psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo who has written several books on kids who kill.

''It is biology and environment and then you have a third factor: circumstance. I've evaluated plenty of kids who have two strikes against them, but there was still some type of odd circumstance that put that gun in their hand.''

Fledgling psychopaths

Murderers and other violent offenders have long been thought to be products of cruel or neglectful environments. New research has led to a belief that the country is full of ''fledgling psychopaths.''

Recent studies conducted in the US on 14 male juveniles convicted of sexual homicide indicate a linked pattern of criminal and antisocial behaviour closely aligned to that of adult sex killers, particularly the psychopathic serial killer.

CRIMINOLOGISTS, psychologists and allied professionals in mental health, law enforcement and penal institutions have more recently become aware of how dysfunctional childhood and adolescent development patterns can and sometimes do lead to a propensity to the commission of violent crimes.

But nowhere is this more apparent than in a seminal and comprehensive American study of juveniles incarcerated for sexual homicide.

Researchers found that, although juvenile sexual murderers comprise less than one percent of juvenile murderers, they are likely to be an emotionally and behaviourally disturbed population with "serious familial, academic, and environmental vulnerabilities".

Sexual homicide is defined as the fusion of "sexual assault and murder and contains a sexual element or activity as the basis of the sequence of events leading to the death of the victim".

In addition to the murderous behaviour, the crime will also either include an overt sexual assault such as rape or sodomy, (in the South African context the latter would be legally defined as aggravated indecent assault) or sexually symbolic behaviour.

This could include lack of clothing on the victim, sexualised positioning of the body, evidence of semen on or near the body, or mutilation of sexual organs.

Another aspect indicative of the sexual homicide in both juveniles and that of adult psychopaths is "overkill", the infliction of excessive trauma beyond that which is necessary to cause the victim's death.

Child maltreatment is an enormous problem in North America. For example, approximately two million Americans report that they were "beaten up" by a parent during childhood.(2) Canadian researchers have also found that 20%-30% of prepubescent children have been sexually abused.(3)

Child maltreatment has been linked with a host of problems such as neurological disturbances,(4) psychiatric difficulties,(5) social skill and interpersonal problems,(6) conduct disorders(7) and the perpetuation of future child abuse.(8) Further, recent research contends that there is an association between child maltreatment and antisocial or aggressive behaviour (although this research is characterized by methodological problems).(9)

Some adolescents continue antisocial behaviour throughout their lives(10) - similar to psychopaths.(11) Psychopaths tend to begin their antisocial activities at a very early age, and their violent and aggressive tendencies remain relatively constant throughout their lives.(12) However, no clear evidence (to date) indicates that adult psychopathy is related to childhood maltreatment. (13)

This article assesses the prevalence of childhood maltreatment in a sample of young offenders and investigates whether the onset of aggressive behaviour in psychopaths is related to childhood maltreatment. To accomplish this, the article examines the association (if any) between psychopathy, childhood maltreatment and antisocial activities. Methodology The study sample was composed of 95 male young offenders incarcerated in two secure youth detention institutions. The offenders were assessed for psychopathy by using information gathered from interview and institutional files and the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (youth version). This instrument is a 20-item symptom checklist designed to measure the interpersonal, affective and behavioural traits of psychopathy in adolescent populations. Each item is scored on a three-point scale and offender scores range from 0 to 40.

The Handbook of Juvenile Forensic Psychology is a comprehensive handbook for mental health professionals working with juveniles in the criminal justice system and in family and dependency courts. Written by a panel of experts in the field, the book focuses on proactive prevention, accurate evaluation, and progressive treatment for delinquent juveniles and for juveniles caught in the web of a contentious divorce or in the foster care system.

The book contains information about: statistics and trends in juvenile justice and forensic psychology; juveniles in gangs; police and juveniles; problematic confessions in children and adolescents; juveniles tried as adults, social development in children and adolescents; conduct disorder or disordered conduct?; the use and misuse of PTSD diagnosis in juvenile forensic settings; psychosis in juvenile offenders; neuropsychiatric vulnerabilities in serious juvenile offenders; children who kill; the classroom avenger; multicultural issues in the assessment and treatment of juveniles; evaluating juvenile competency to waive Miranda rights; assessing psychopathy in juveniles; violence risk assessment of youth; juvenile sex offenders; treatment in institutions; the role of the psychiatrist with incarcerated youth; confining and curing the juvenile offender; the role of the school psychologist in juvenile forensics; preparing children for court; reciprocal connectedness and the limitations of attachment theory in the family and juvenile dependency courts; roles psychologists play in child custody disputes; evaluating juveniles in custody disputes; the juvenile dependency process; juvenile court and dependency; the psychologist as consultant in the child welfare system; and keeping high-risk youth from becoming incarcerated adults.

Psychopathy is a devastating problem for society, especially when it appears in individuals with repertoires of antisocial behavior (Hart & Hare, 1997). Because psychopathy is investigated almost exclusively in adulthood, little is known about the potential childhood precursors of this constellation of personality traits. In this study, we use the California Child Q-Set (CCQ; Block, 1961), a well-investigated ipsative measure of personality traits, to measure psychopathic traits in childhood, allowing examination of the concurrent and prospective correlates of CCQ psychopathy dimension scores in a clinical and comparison sample of boys. Studying childhood correlates of psychopathic traits is essential for mental health professionals to identify children at risk for serious antisocial behavior and perhaps use appropriate early intervention strategies.